


Little Raven

by ohwise1ne



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bran is the Night King, Branking, Crack Treated Seriously, Dream Sex, I'm so sorry, I'm working out my feelings about this terrible season, M/M, Smut, The only ending I will accept, The weirwood isn't happy, Way too seriously, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 05:17:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18887926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohwise1ne/pseuds/ohwise1ne
Summary: Bran often feels his presence like a physical sensation, sliding through his thoughts. Another body, another mind, nudging at the space he occupies inside his own skull. An icy breath sliding down his spine. A pair of eyes, the color the Wall takes at the stroke of a moonless midnight.They follow him. Everywhere he goes, they follow him. The eyes that stare back at the watchers in the night, unblinking—and fixed, now, on him.It should alarm him. It should fill him with terror, the awareness of this being’s power, licking at his thoughts.Bran opens his eyes and stares back into the night.





	Little Raven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeeno2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/gifts).



> This began as a crack fic and somehow turned into one of the prettiest things I've ever written.
> 
> I blame this entirely on jeeno, who refuses to accept responsibility for this story even though she prompted it, beta'd it and sent me numerous Curious Cats related to the nature of the Night King's true relationship with Bran ;)
> 
> Without further ado, I give you my take on the Night King/Bran backstory we definitely would have gotten if D&D had the good sense to take those extra episodes.

The whispers return when Bran goes beyond the Wall.

They never really left him, of course. They have followed him for years. In the pockets of sleep, the space between dreams—or on the inhale of snowy air, a sharp breath of burning ice and a soft voice as cold and high as the winter sun, filling his lungs and his mind—they have followed him.

He used to wonder, hope against hope, if they belonged to the Three-Eyed Raven.

When he’s beyond the Wall, there is no doubt where they come from.

Jojen senses something is wrong. His eyes follow Bran in the morning when Hodor peels him from his blankets, arranges him by the fire for a morning meal of freshly hunted rabbit. One evening, while Bran watches Hodor build camp, Jojen kneels in the snow beside him.

“I don’t know why he is speaking to you,” Jojen says quietly. “But you don’t need to listen.”

The problem, for Bran, is he can’t do anything but.

The words aren’t carried to him in any language he understands, but he knows their meaning all the same. They speak to him of prophecies, centuries old. Of the tales Old Nan used to murmur long after his mother thought he was asleep, face strange and foreign in flickering candlelight. Bran remembers the old woman’s voice, lulling him into dreams, and wonders if the whispers have been coming for him his entire life.

They are changing, now that he draws closer.

Bran often feels his presence like a physical sensation, sliding through his own thoughts. Another body, another mind, nudging at the space he occupies inside his own skull. An icy breath sliding down his spine. A pair of eyes, the color the Wall takes at the stroke of a moonless midnight.

They follow him. Everywhere he goes, they follow him. The eyes that stare back at the watchers in the night—unblinking… and fixed, now, on him.

It should be alarming. It should fill him with terror, the awareness of this being’s power, licking at his thoughts.

They have watched him his entire life. Beckoning him.

He sees that now.

Bran opens his eyes and stares back into the night. 

* * *

The first time Bran finds him, it is in the waking dreams he shares with the weirwood tree.

It is different from the others, of course. Bran is alone. The Three-Eyed Raven is sleeping.

He would not approve of Bran’s presence here.

There is a sea of bodies all around, with the same stare of empty, endless winter. The wights are blind to the warmth of Bran’s blood, pounding in his ears as he moves through their ranks. He registers, distantly, that he should be afraid. _The legends are true. The dead are alive, and all around him._

He finds his fear focused on something else entirely.

There is something much more important, lurking just out of reach. The answer to a question that has echoed in his heart for as long as he can remember—perhaps even longer. Bran can  _feel_ him, a nebulous of power and death and life, brilliant life, breathing strength back into bodies that were broken long ago.

There is no doubt in his mind who this is.

Bran's legs are not his own, carrying him without his permission through the ocean of rattling breath. Carrying him, until he arrives in a clearing. Until he sees him.

The King of Winter. Or is it Death?

Bran looks upon his face and realizes there is no difference.

He is coldly majestic atop his mount. Unlike the rotting members of his army, his body seems eternal. Ageless. He is both more and less like a man than all the others—a body that still retains the shape of the human from which it was born, yet transformed into something far beyond the limits of that mortal vessel. His face seems chiseled from ancient ice, older and more powerful than the Wall itself.

Bran wonders if there is anything in this world that could touch such a creature.

No sooner has he finished the thought that the crowned head swivels—and, against all probability, turns directly toward _him._

Bran knows these eyes. He has seen them in so many dreams, staring back at him from the dark shadows of the godswood, the crypts, the darkness beneath his bed.

They stare at him now. The same as before, but blazing bright with icy fire. Paralyzing him.

_I see you._

Standing before him now, Bran can understand the words as clearly as though they've rolled off his own mother's tongue. The first cold tendrils of fear slither through him, and Bran is suddenly aware of a thousand heads moving, turning, staring. _Seeing._

His breath is so loud in his ears, crystallizing on the air, that he doesn't hear the thump of boots in deep snow, approaching.

He doesn't know what's happening until the Night King is standing right in front of him—and by then, it's too late.

Bran wakes in the weirwood with a shuddering scream, black fingers curled around his forearm in an icy brand, the voice of his constant companion still echoing in his head:

_I am coming for you now._

* * *

In the dream, Bran is running.

His legs carry him along the bank of a frothing stream. All around him, the woods are a living thing. Reaching for him. Entreating him to stop.

Bran does not stop.

The whispers have taken on a solid shape now. Coalescing into words, they slide through his thoughts, sharp and cold as a blade of ice.

_I will find you, little raven._

Bran's thighs are beginning to burn with the exertion of his flight. It is an old pain, unfamiliar and nearly forgotten. He welcomes it.

_There is no where you can hide._

Bran is not thinking of hiding. There is only flight, the sensation of his feet pounding, pounding, almost as hard and fast as his heart and equally spurred on by the voice that shivers over him.

_You belong to me now._

"I don't," Bran cries out to the empty wood, his voice laced with breath. The wood whispers back, but Bran cannot make out the words. There is only the voice in his mind, crooning.

_You do._

The air snaps and crackles with sudden cold—Bran's lungs tighten, grasping at the thinning air—and then his legs aren't moving anymore. Nothing is moving. His body is suspended, mid-air. Frozen.

The woods fall silent. There is the crunch of boots in the snow behind him. Snowflakes swirl and sprinkle across Bran's face, and he is helpless to wipe them away.

He is helpless to do anything at all as cold breath shivers across his neck.

_Don't you see?_

The air somehow grows even colder. Bran would be shivering if his body would move, if his limbs would just _cooperate—_

Then the Night King steps around, and all other thoughts fall away.

He is tall. So much taller than Bran. This is clear, now that Bran can do nothing but hang there. Suspended. Cold eyes run down his body like a bucket of ice water, and Bran shivers inside his frozen skin.

 _Our destinies are one, little raven._ A long-fingered hand twitches, and his arm lifts obediently into the air in response. _You have been marked. Since the days of the Children._

To Bran's mounting horror, the sleeve of his overcoat begins to fall away like dust on the breeze.

 _But it is our age now._ On his arm, the shape of long fingers begins to itch, tingling with the proximity of its owner. _The Children are no more._

Those bottomless eyes bore into him. Watching, as they always have, while fingers cold as black ice slide up his arm.

Bran's mouth falls open in a silent gasp.

_It is only us._

Those fingers curl around his wrist—pressing, _holding—_ and the world is spinning, suddenly saturated with color and icy white light. A vision, sharp and clear as the cold night sky stretches out before him: the longest winter, a million stars (or is that snow?) eternally revolving in the heavens above—and at the center of it— _Bran can’t breathe, he can’t scream, he can’t—_ at the center of it all, he can see them—again and again, two threads that stitch the ages together—

_He can see—_

Bran jerks awake, cheek pressed to a thick fur cloak and hips aching from the saddle. Thick leather straps hold him fast to his uncle’s back. With wild eyes, Bran looks to his arm—but the fabric there is still in tact, even if his arm burns and burns beneath.

“You’re all right,” comes Meera’s voice at his shoulder, her small body pressed against his. “We’re almost there.”

The horse beats a steady rhythm beneath them as it cuts through the forest.

From the darkness of the trees, blue eyes watch them go.

* * *

Sometimes, Bran has dreams that are not his own.

This happened before he became the raven, of course. Bran has long been haunted by snatches of lives that do not belong to him. Glimpses of faces he knows and yet does not—memories that are somehow familiar, like he’s stepped inside them a thousand times before.

They are more frequent now. And Bran understands that, somehow, they come from within.

He sees himself wearing a hundred different faces, skipping across the ages like stones across a smooth and glassy lake. He sees the Wall in its infancy, so much smaller than it is today. He sees the Dornish marshes blanketed in snow. He sees the billowing cloud of smoke that rises above King's Landing as it burns. He sees the man who gave the Night King his body, staring up at the sun and closing his eyes.

Bran also sees himself. Kneeling. Marching. Ruling. Raising castles and walls. Razing them, years afterward.

He looks down and sees slender fingers, white as snow. He presses a hand to his breast and finds no heart beating beneath the jagged scar that changed him so many winters ago.

He feels those same fingers trailing across his face. Brushing the swell of his bottom lip, and then the top one.

_I have found you again, my raven._

Sometimes, Bran stands atop the icy hill alone. The wind whips his face as he looks upon the waste of snow and jagged rock. Waiting.

Other times, they stand together.

Fingers slide along his scalp. The whistling wind breathes its icy whisper down each knot of Bran’s spine. Here is the place they will mark him. Here is the place that makes him fall apart, again and again, in the palms of those long-fingered hands. A caress, almost like a lover, stirs something in the deepest parts of him, and Bran is infinite. He is the stars and the wind and time itself.

It is impossible to tell the difference between them, in those moments.

He begins to lose track of what is then, and what is now, and what will always be.

* * *

When Bran returns to Winterfell, it doesn't feel like coming home until he finally goes to the godswood.

Everywhere else in the castle is too noisy. The thoughts and messy emotions of its inhabitants squeeze against one another like so many unwashed bodies. Competing for oxygen.

Not here.

The muted light of the fading afternoon casts red shadows across the snow as it trickles through the leaves overhead. Sitting beneath the heart tree, Bran feels a deep peace settle over him. The ancient silence of this place is soothing. Familiar.

Father always said this place belonged to the Starks.

Bran sees now that the ones who own these trees came long before the Starks existed and will remain here long after they've disappeared.

He can see everything, in the silence of this place.

Bran closes his eyes and opens the rest of himself to the world beyond.

There is a rushing in his ears. Beneath his wings. He is carried on the winds of time itself, slicing through hours and long stretches of stars—searching—grasping for—

There.

_Here._

Skin white as snow. The quiet thrum of destiny, older than any of the oldest Houses of Westeros, humming in his veins. Bran's entire body vibrates with the urgency of his presence.

He is here.

Bran opens his eyes, and blue eyes open with them.

The Night King stands at the silent mouth of the godswood. Regarding him. Bran is aware that he is here, but... perhaps not truly. That this may be a premonition, or a memory from long ago.

It doesn’t matter.

He is  _here_ _._

Blue eyes wash down Bran’s body like an icy breath of air, lingering below his waist.

_They have stolen your legs._

“They have stolen many things,” Bran says. “From both of us.”

Wisps of snow whisper and swirl around them as the Night King moves, slowly, across the clearing. He seems to float over the freshly fallen snow. Untouchable.

Bran knows now this is not true.

 _They have taken everything,_ he whispers in Bran’s mind. _But they cannot take you from me._

Bran’s eyes flutter shut as the icy smoothness of those fingers—as familiar as his own—brush through the fine hair across his forehead. In their wake, a light dust of snow settles between the strands.

“So we will take everything from them,” Bran says softly.

When those curved hands lift in the air, power swells and climbs in the clearing, sparking like electricity. It crackles down Bran’s spine, skips across each of his nerve endings until his entire body is alive with sensation. Until the tips of his toes are tingling as he is lifted, floating, from his chair into the invisible arms of an old and sacred magic.

_And you, my raven, will have the world._

Bran’s back meets the hard bark of the heart tree, but he can hardly feel it. He can only feel the magic rolling over his body in long, toe-curling waves, washing like cool water across his bones. It buzzes in the tips of the fingers that trail down Bran’s forearm, where the dark brand hums with pleasure beneath his fur coat.

“I only want you.”

Those blue eyes are mere inches from his own now. Bran’s mouth falls open, a silent gasp, as wide hands drag reverently down his body. Down, to where the evidence of his sudden desire has manifested itself in the only way it knows how.

_So you do._

Bran’s head falls back against the trunk hard enough to bruise. An abrupt chill rushes across his skin, the stitches of his clothes disintegrating until his clothes are unraveling, falling apart. Lost to the air.

 _And how you still want me,_ the soft voice murmurs in his head. _After all this time._

Bran’s vision swims as long fingers wrap around him. Stroking. He should be cold. He is naked, now, and bare to the snow, to the icy gaze of winter itself—but Bran was born of winter. Long before Catelyn Tully cradled his tiny body in her arms, Bran knew the chill of frost on his tongue, across his skin.

“I’ve never stopped,” he says, breathlessly.

He prays it never will stop. Even if he knows that this, as everything before and after, will come to an end.

But for now, Bran allows himself to lose himself in the present.

Cold lips brush across his forehead. The grip around Bran’s length tightens. Twists. The way he likes. The way he’s always liked. Because here, he is known—he is understood. He is _seen._

And he is watched. Hungrily, by eyes as blue and cold as a cloudless winter sky. The same way they will watch him a few nights later, moments before the glass pierces his breast a final time.

 _My summer child._ The words slide through him, as though sensing the fear that spikes through his heart—a flailing remnant of his humanity. _This is always how it was meant to end._

“But I don’t want it to,” Bran manages desperately, breath coming short and fast. He knows who he is—the raven, the greenseer, the equal of this being who will bring both ruin and restoration to this earth. But right now, as they stand together and stare into death’s deep and infinite gaze, Bran does not feel like much more than a boy.

_You are no boy._

The fingers tighten, burning, _cold_ —and Bran cries out at the pleasure they rip from him.

_And you are no man._

His body, so much larger than Bran’s own, is hard and unyielding as it presses against him. Pinning him to the tree, along with the magic that has already trapped him there.

_We are more than men, now._

Bran’s hands are trembling as they trace the face that has found him over and over throughout the ages. The face that once smiled with a man’s smile. The mouth that was once warm and soft where it now brushes cold, fleeting kisses against Bran’s lips. Blue eyes that Bran could always find staring back at him in the darkness of his night chamber—eyes that will soon be closed forever.

A deep chuckle washes over him. _Is this what you fear, sweet raven?_

His rhythm slows, leaving Bran panting. His expression almost looks soft, in this moment. Full of an emotion that Bran did not know he was still capable of.

 _I have lost you, little one, time and time again._ His palms run up Bran’s torso. Cold—so _cold—_ but they burn like icy fire against his skin. _And still you have returned to me._

Invisible hands lift him gently into the air. Bran feels himself straining in the cold, wanting, _pulsing—_ but the press of fingers against his hips soothes him.

_And so I will return to you._

His gaze darkens, and then Bran feels himself stretching, expanding _,_ suddenly hot and damp and ready for what’s to come.

“Please,” Bran says wetly, not quite knowing what he’s begging for.

They have not done this, in this body. Not truly. So the burn of this first long, slow thrust tears a ragged gasp from Bran’s throat. He is held steady by the large hands wrapped around his ribcage—lowering him, slowly, until Bran is filled completely. Until there is nothing but the stretch and pinch and tingling magic that melts the base of his spine and leaves him quivering, helpless, against the cold leather that covers his lover’s chest.

Behind him, Bran thinks he hears the ancient tree release a low moan. Or perhaps it comes from his own throat. From both of them.

A long, slow slide, and then he is filled again. Empty, and then full. And isn’t that the cycle of this mad dance they’ve played throughout the ages. Finding and leaving one another. Again and again.

This, Bran thinks, will be the very last time.

These bodies know each other, even if it is the first. The slide of skin, the words gasped and murmured between thrusts. The raw carnality of their coupling. They are more than men, but there is something animalistic about this union—about the edge of pain that slices through him whenever he is impaled, his lover pulsing with pleasure within him. The messiness of Bran’s mouth, red and swollen as he pulls thin lips down for another kiss.

But there is something spiritual about it, too. Something that transcends the First Men and the Children alike. For in these moments, Bran keeps slipping into the thoughts and sensations of the body that pins him, roughly, against the tree. Into this man who is not a man, wringing every ounce of pleasure that this human body is capable of surrendering.

 _We have been blessed, little one, with these delights,_ that cold voice whispered to him once. _It would be a shame not to experience them to their fullest._

Bran is beyond full, in these moments. He is overflowing. The sprawling breadth of his pleasure cannot be contained. Bran’s head cracks against the open mouth of the tree again, but he does not feel the pain. There is only the burning slide within him, stroking him inside and out—driving him higher, further, _beyond—_

 _My lovely raven,_ the Night King breathes, and Bran sees those eyes, drinking him in as he looks now. Flushed. Ruined. Utterly, torturously human.

_Do not fret._

_You will always be mine._

When the world goes white with pleasure, Bran wonders if this is what it feels like, when all those broken bodies were lifted from their snowy graves. If this is how his cousin felt, the bastard with many names, when he was brought back to this world on wings of fire instead of ice.

There is no difference anymore.

Bran sees now that they are all of it.

Time has long since lost any true meaning for Bran, but he recognizes that many minutes pass afterward. His body, naked and flushed with pleasure, is cradled for long moments in the strong arms that have carried him through the centuries. Caressing him.

Bran buries his face in the icy leather and breathes.

_I shall come back for you._

With a wave of a cold, long-fingered hand, Bran’s body is buried once again in furs and thick leather. Gently, almost tenderly, the Night King lowers him back into his chair.

Bran looks up into icy blue eyes. He sees how they will find him in this very place, only a few moons from now, peering at him through the darkness for the last time.

“I know,” Bran says softly, and lets go.

* * *

It is too warm in King’s Landing.

The stench of burnt bodies still lingers on the breeze when it drifts in from Blackwater Bay. His oldest sister has entreated him to return home to Winterfell. At least until the restorations have been complete.

Bran has refused her.

If they insist he should be king, this is where he shall remain.

The structure that temporarily houses his sleeping quarters is spartan. A dresser, a mirror and a bed, not much larger than the one he spent those many weeks recovering from his fall.

He wonders sometimes if he would still find himself on this path if he’d never tumbled from that window. If this life would belong to someone else.

Then he remembers the eyes that would follow him as a child—how he would chase them incessantly over the tips of trees and rooftops—and he knows this destiny has always been his.

Or perhaps that is the ghost of another voice. Whispering beneath his own.

The King of Death, they used to call him. Bran understands now that life and death are simply an inhale and exhale of the same breath of air. A never-ending cycle.

Slowly, he wheels himself before the mirror.

The face staring back is nearly unrecognizable. They insist he wear a crown, and so he wears one. Bran studies the gold circlet atop his head and remembers a crown of ice. He remembers the way it felt beneath his fingers. Fiery cold, and sharp enough at the edges to draw blood.

Lashes fluttering shut, he lifts the ring of jewels from his hair and places it atop the dresser.

Bran opens his eyes, and blue eyes open with them.

He smiles.

_His king._

_His raven._

It is impossible to lose what has forever been a part of him.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe my first and only Game of Thrones fic is Branking.
> 
> To all six people who have made it this far: thank you! It was either this or a coffee shop AU with barista!Bran and a mysterious silent customer who keeps ordering extra icy drinks. 
> 
> I'm publishing this before the finale releases, so there's a chance all the leaks are wrong and we'll just have an hour and twenty minutes of Bran and the NK boning it out against a weirwood tree. A girl can hope.
> 
> Feel free to yell at me about this fic on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ohwise1ne).


End file.
